


Math Doesn't Solve Everything

by Cleo



Series: Math Doesn't Solve Everything [1]
Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Angst, Denial, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sibling Incest, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-18
Updated: 2006-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:33:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cleo/pseuds/Cleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don has to deal with his and Charlie's reactions after the office shooting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Math Doesn't Solve Everything

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: This fic has incestuous overtones for the brothers Eppes. DON’T LIKE that cup of tea DON'T READ IT! Thank you.
> 
> This came about because I couldn't get the image of Charlie clinging to his laptop after the shooting in the episode Rampage. I wrote this the night the episode aired thinking it would go further but alas the bunny keeled over after I was done.

Don couldn't get it out of his head. The images kept assaulting him whenever he closed his eyes. Sometimes the scene would play out as it had and other times there would be two fatalities instead of one. The bullet would hit the whiteboard a few inches more to the left, after going through Charlie's head.

Though it had been several days and Charlie did seem to have dealt with the shooting in the bullpen. Don on the other hand still couldn't get rid of the image of Little Boy Lost Charlie, hugging his laptop to his chest. It reminded him too much of when their mom had been sick and how Charlie was shortly after she died. Charlie had floated off into his own world inside his head. Thank goodness this time Charlie hadn't pulled away and submerged himself in his math. Instead he'd retreated to home and the CalSci campus.

After their discussion in the break room about pasta, Don knew his brother was fine and dealing with it as only his mind could. Yet here Don was waking up again from another nightmare of Charlie being dead as well. He couldn't deal with it again, not this time. Since his brother started helping him he'd been in the middle of shootouts, more than twice where he was a potential target. Each time Don had gotten lucky that he hadn't lost his baby brother, yet. He loved him too much to lose him, sometimes way too much.

Don wasn’t about to go there. He'd promised himself shortly after coming home, upon realizing how his baby brother had grown into his own as a man that he was never going to go there. Any unbrotherly feelings he was having would never see the light of day without an ultra high security clearance and even then they wouldn’t get permission to be revealed. No, in the end Don had to let his brother have a life where Don could never be the one to comfort him as anything more than a brother.

Yet the nightmares still haunted him. Well, he'd deal. Don Eppes, if anything, was a good agent and as such you learned to deal with the nightmares that plagued your mind in sleep due to cases. So once again, Don used tried and true methods to get back to sleep and if he woke in the morning wishing to hold his brother closer than appropriate, he'd deal with that too. After all he'd had years of practice burying his true feelings for his brother.


End file.
